"This is a more critical than usual mini-review of Ubuntu Feisty beta on an HP NC8430 laptop. It practically examines some of the problems laptop users will run into when trying to run Feisty on their hardware."

I object that it has to be a *major* vendor. Small ones could do this as well. Size doesn't always result in the better product. Especially as several such vendors can cooperate much like the developers already do. Of course, a small vendor wouldn't have the huge palette of products that Dell could offer, but a few very well-done products do the job. Apple has proven this.

I could be wrong, but I think only a larger company would have the resources to tweak the drivers to the level they need to be as good as the windows drivers. Also, testing, support and maintenance (patches) would be involved.

Crap - a tire-company for example doesn't need zillions of testers too, if you're using some quality software engineering you do have certain means to test quality and reliability. On the other hand, who with a sane mind would like to be an tester for tires, so to say and early adopter? As I said, no one with a sane mind. So a big community as mark for quality or development is just nonsense.